Profile: Javal Davis

Javal Davis was a participant or observer in the following events:

Top: Charles Garner punches one of the seven detainees. Bottom: Lynndie England points at the word “Rapeist” written on the leg of another one of the seven detainees. Other detainees are forced to sit naked on each other in the background. [Source: Public domain]At Abu Ghraib, seven Iraqi detainees are brought to Cellblock 1A from one of the tent camps escorted by MPs. The seven Iraqis are suspected of having taken part in a fight. They include Nori al-Yasseri, detainee number 7787; Hussein Mohssein Mata al-Zayiadi, detainee number 19446; and four others known only by their first names: Haidar, Ahmed, Ahzem, Hashiem and Mustafa. [Washington Post, 5/21/2004; US Department of Defense, 8/23/2004 ] At least one of them was detained on suspicion of car theft. [Los Angeles Times, 10/21/2004] When they arrive, they all have their hands tied behind their backs with plastic handcuffs. Empty sandbags (“gunnysacks”) are put over their heads. [Rolling Stone, 7/28/2004] According to an account later provided by MP Spc. Matthew Wisdom, the other MPs suddenly begin striking at the prisoners. Spc. Charles Graner, Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick and Sgt. Javal Davis “rotate around the detainees and abuse and hit them,” Wisdom later testifies. Graner poses for a photograph with his fist, clenched as if about to strike, close to a detainee’s head. “Right after the picture [is] taken, he actually hit[s] him,” Wisdom says in his testimony. [Los Angeles Times, 8/5/2004] The MPs then throw the tied-up Iraqi men against the walls until they fall on the floor. Wisdom later recounts, “Sfc [Sgt. First Class] Snider grabbed my prisoner and threw him into a pile.” [New Yorker, 5/10/2004] Pfc. Lynndie England, who had her birthday the day before and has come to the cellblock to visit her boyfriend Spc. Graner, says the prisoners fall in what she calls a “dog pile.” [Rolling Stone, 7/28/2004] According to Wisdom, he sees “Staff Sgt. Frederic, Davis and Cpl. Graner walking around the pile hitting the prisoners.” [New Yorker, 5/10/2004] Several guards take turns leaping on top of the pile. Also present is Spc. Jeremy Sivits, who later testifies: “That is when Sgt. Davis ran across the room and lunged in the air and landed in the middle of where the detainees were. I believe Davis ran across the room a total of two times and landed in the middle of the pile of detainees.” [Washington Post, 5/22/2004] “A couple of the detainees kind of made an ‘ah’ sound, as if this hurt them or caused them some type of pain.” In the meanwhile Pfc. England and Sgt. Javal Davis stomped on the lying prisoners’ fingers and feet. Sivits heard them scream because of it. [Rolling Stone, 7/28/2004] The alleged car thief later testified during Frederick’s trial, he felt someone putting his foot on his head when he was thrown into the pile of men. “He put his whole weight on my head and on my knee. I was screaming and crying.” [Los Angeles Times, 10/21/2004] At this point, MP Sgt. Shannon K. Snider of the 372nd MP Company, who is working in an office on the top floor, hearing the cries of pain, leans over the railing and angrily yells at Sgt. Davis to stop abusing the prisoners. When Davis steps away from the pile of men, Snider leaves. “I believe that Sgt. Snider thought it was an isolated incident,” Sivits says, “and that when he ordered Sgt. Davis to stop, it was over.” [Rolling Stone, 7/28/2004] It was not. Testimony by Spc. Wisdom suggests some ringleaders among the MPs pressured the others to join in with the abuse. According to Wisdom, he too asked Davis not to stomp on toes. Davis then allegedly tells Wisdom: “Who are you to tell me to stop?” [Los Angeles Times, 8/5/2004] Wisdom witnesses Frederick hitting a prisoner “in the side of his chest.” [New Yorker, 5/10/2004; Los Angeles Times, 8/5/2004] Frederick then takes notice of Wisdom looking on. Wisdom testifies that Frederick “looked at me and said: ‘Wisdom, you’ve got to get some of this,’ meaning I should hit the detainees as well.” [Los Angeles Times, 8/5/2004] According to Wisdom’s account, he goes outside after this incident, [New Yorker, 5/10/2004] and proceeds to alert his team leader Sgt. Robert Jones. [Los Angeles Times, 8/5/2004] After Snider has left the scene, and possibly Wisdom as well, the MPs put the prisoners back to their feet and remove their handcuffs. Graner orders the detainees in Arabic to take their clothes off. Graner takes the head of one of the naked but hooded prisoners in one arm and smashes his free fist into his temple, causing the prisoner to sag down on the floor. “Damn, that hurt!” Graner says jokingly. Sivits walks over to see if the detainee is still alive. “I could tell that the detainee was unconscious, because his eyes were closed and he was not moving, but I could see his chest rise and fall, so I knew he was still alive.” Maybe this is the same incident witnessed by Wisdom, as perhaps is the following. Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick writes an X on another detainee’s chest with his finger and says, “Watch this.” Then he punches the prisoner on the indicated spot so massively that the hooded prisoner sways backward, falls to his knees and is gasping for air. [Rolling Stone, 7/28/2004] Frederick has singled out the alleged car thief for extra punishment. “I stood him up and punched him in the chest. I was angry. They told me he was the ringleader. He hit a female soldier in the face with a rock.” [Los Angeles Times, 10/21/2004] Sivits testifies that Frederick says that “he thought he put the detainee in cardiac arrest.” [Rolling Stone, 7/28/2004] When the detainee subsequently collapses, he is checked by a female medic. She says he is “faking.” [Los Angeles Times, 10/21/2004] The seven detainees will continue to be abused into the night and will be forced to form naked human pyramids (see Evening November 7, 2003).

Top: the seven detainees are forced to form a human pyramid. Charles Graner and Sabrina Harman stand behind them smiling and giving thumbs up signs. Bottom: Some of the same detainees are forced to simulate oral sex on each other. [Source: Public domain]At Abu Ghraib, seven Iraqi detainees are brought to Cellblock 1A from one of the tent camps escorted by MPs. The seven Iraqis are suspected of having taken part in a fight. They include Nori al-Yasseri, Hussein Mohssein Mata al-Zayiadi, and four others known only by their first names: Haidar, Ahmed, Ahzem, Hashiem and Mustafa. [Washington Post, 5/21/2004; US Department of Defense, 8/23/2004 ] They are repeatedly punched and attacked by Staff Sgt. Ivan L. Frederick, Spc. Charles Graner, and other MPs (see Evening November 7, 2003). The MPs then take out their cameras to take pictures of the seven naked men and begin putting them in humiliating poses, often placing themselves in the picture as well, smiling. Graner makes them climb on top of each other to form a human pyramid, as is reported by Spc. Sabrina Harman. [Washington Post, 5/22/2004; Rolling Stone, 7/28/2004] “They put us two on the bottom, two on top of them, and two on top of those and on top,” Al-Zayiadi will say. [Washington Post, 5/21/2004] “The pyramid lasted about 15 to 20 minutes,” according to Harman. [Washington Post, 5/22/2004] The prisoners are also made to crawl on hands and knees with MPs riding on their backs. [Rolling Stone, 7/28/2004] “They were sitting on our backs like riding animals,” Al-Zayiadi says. Meanwhile, others are taking photographs. [Washington Post, 5/21/2004] Frederick then takes hold of the prisoner whom he has singled out for additional punishment and motions him to masturbate. “I grabbed his arm by the elbow, put it on his genitals and moved it back and forth with an arm motion, and he did it.” [Los Angeles Times, 10/21/2004] He makes another detainee do the same. “I lifted his hood and gave him a hand gesture, telling him to keep doing it himself.” [New York Times, 10/21/2004] Spc. Matthew Wisdom, who complained to his team leader Sgt. Robert Jones earlier in the evening about the treatment of the detainees, returns to Tier 1A to find a naked detainee being forced to masturbate in front of another naked detainee on his knees before him. “I saw two naked detainees,” Wisdom will later recall, “one masturbating to another kneeling with its mouth open. I thought I should just get out of there. I didn’t think it was right.” [New Yorker, 5/10/2004] According to Wisdom, Frederick says to him: “Look what these animals do when we leave them alone for two seconds.” [New Yorker, 5/10/2004; Los Angeles Times, 8/5/2004] Meanwhile, Pfc. Lynndie England makes sexually suggestive comments “in a somewhat sarcastic, fun tone of voice,” according to Wisdom. [Los Angeles Times, 8/5/2004] “I heard Pfc. England shout out, ‘He’s getting hard.’” [New Yorker, 5/10/2004] Again Wisdom leaves the building to tell Sgt. Jones, who assures him the “problem [will] be addressed and dealt with,” [Los Angeles Times, 8/5/2004] and Wisdom assumes that the problem will be taken care of. [New Yorker, 5/10/2004] Others, meanwhile, are lined up and forced to masturbate. These facts are corroborated by photographs that show the MPs laughing as they look on. [Rolling Stone, 7/28/2004] Al-Zayiadi later identifies himself in one of these pictures. “They told my friend to masturbate and told me to masturbate also, while they were taking pictures,” he says. [Washington Post, 5/21/2004] In the end, Al-Zayiadi says they are tossed naked but still hooded into a cell. “They opened the water in the cell and told us to lay face down in the water and we stayed like that until the morning, in the water, naked, without clothes.” [Washington Post, 5/21/2004] One of the seven prisoners is likely Haydar Sabbar Abed who says he was originally arrested for not carrying his ID card. After being involved in a fight with an Iraqi prison employee in one of the tent camps, he is taken to the Hard Site. He later recalls: “They cut off our clothes and… told us to masturbate towards this female soldier. But we didn’t agree to do it, so they beat us.” He also says: “They made us act like dogs, putting leashes around our necks. They’d whistle and we’d have to bark like dogs. We thought they were going to kill us.” [BBC, 8/4/2004] The next day, Wisdom asks for and is granted a transfer to a job elsewhere in the prison. Although he and Sgt. Jones say they have been angered by the abuse, they do little more than mildly confront their colleagues with their objections. [Los Angeles Times, 8/5/2004] To the detainees, the experience has been harrowing. Al-Yasseri will later call it a “night which we felt like 1,000 nights.” “I was trying to kill myself,” says Al-Zayiadi, “but I didn’t have any way of doing it.” [Rolling Stone, 7/28/2004] Gen. George Fay will also describe these incidents in his report (see August 25, 2004), which he concludes was an the affair of MPs alone. He states that military intelligence “involvement in this abuse has not been alleged nor is it likely.” However, one of the pictures taken that night, depicting the “human pyramid,” is later used as a screen saver for a computer in the Hard Site. The screen saver is later seen by a female military intelligence interrogator, but she states, according to Gen. Fay, that she did not report the picture because she did not see it again. The same interrogator, Fay will report, had a “close personal relationship” with Staff Sgt. Frederick, [US Department of Defense, 8/23/2004 ] one of the main instigators of the abuse that night.

Charles Graner gets the longest Abu Ghraib-related sentence: ten years in prison. [Source: US Army]Between May 19, 2004, and March 22, 2006, a series of low ranking US soldiers are convicted in military trials for abuses of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq: Specialist Jeremy Sivits. He pleads guilty to four charges on May 19, 2004. He is demoted, discharged, and sentenced to one year in prison. Specialist Armin Cruz. He pleads guilty to two charges on September 11, 2004. He is demoted, discharged, and sentenced to eight months in prison. Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick. He pleads guilty to eight counts on October 21, 2004. He is demoted, forfeits pay, and sentenced to eight years in prison. Specialist Megan Ambuhl. She pleads guilty to one charge on October 30, 2004. She is demoted. Specialist Charles Graner. He is found guilty to a number of charges on January 15, 2005. He is demoted, dishonorably discharged, and sentenced to ten years in prison. Specialist Roman Krol. He pleads guilty to two charges on February 1, 2005. He is sentences to ten months in prison. Sergeant Javal Davis. He pleads guilty to three charges on February 4, 2005. He is demoted, discharged, and sentenced to six months in prison. Specialist Sabrina Harman. She is found guilty of three charges on May 19, 2005. She is discharged and sentenced to six months in prison. Private first class Lynndie England. She is found guilty of three charges on September 27, 2005. She is dishonorably discharged and sentenced to three years in prison. Sergeant Michael Smith. He is found guilty of five charges. His is demoted, discharged, and sentenced to three months in prison. So far no officers have been convicted for any Abu Ghraib related abuses. [New York Times, 3/23/2006]

During a pre-trial hearing for Spc. Charles Graner held at a US military tribunal in Mannheim, Germany, Judge Col. James L. Pohl orders the US government to complete three investigative reports about Abu Ghraib by September 10 for submission as evidence. If the government fails to complete the reports by October, he says he will “seriously revisit” Graner’s plea to dismiss the case. Pre-trial hearings are also being held in Mannheim for Spc. Megan Ambuhl, Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick, and Spc. Javal Davis (see August 24, 2004) in order to establish what evidence can or cannot be submitted to the court-martial [London Times, 8/23/2004]

Javal Davis. [Source: Jana Birchum / Getty Images]During a pre-trial hearing for Sgt. Javal Davis held at a US military tribunal in Mannheim, Germany, Judge Col. James L. Pohl denies a motion by Davis’ attorney to have Rumsfeld testify. Pohl says the defense failed to link the actions of the accused with Rumsfeld’s orders and actions. [CNN, 8/24/2004] Davis will eventually be convicted and sentenced to six months in prison (see May 19, 2004-March 22, 2006).

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